Etzioni: “no philosophy that better describes Obama’s position than communitarianism”
Obama and Etzioni
Amitai Etzioni, the high priest of communitarianism, was in Israel recently and was interviewed by the Jerusalem Post.
Here’s a short, but revealing excerpt:
Why did you call your movement “Communitarianism”?
That’s actually an interesting story. I started a little group in 1990, and I tried to find a word to counter excessive individualism. Communitarianism is actually associated with…
Communism?
Well, yes, when it first came up in the mid-19th century, it was associated with communism in East Asia. So we had a very long debate about whether to use it or not. But we just couldn’t come up with another term that would speak for community and common good. And we hoped that our kind of neo-communitarianism would succeed in becoming a kind of a symbol for this other approach. It’s a particularly key point at the moment, because there is no philosophy that better describes Obama’s position than communitarianism. But nobody wants him to label it thus, because it immediately evokes the image of East Asia, Singapore and Japan. So, it may have been an imperfect choice of a term, but now we’re kind of stuck with it.
1) He admits that Communitarianism is traditionally associated with Communism; and 2) he specifically identifies Obama’s ideology as that of Communitarianism.
If you haven’t delved into the research of Niki Raapana, I recommend that you do. I’m not sure when it was that she first labeled Obama a communitarian, but it was quite some time ago - long before the admission of Etzioni (as if we needed that anyway).
By the way, there’s a bit of subterfuge in the above excerpt. While answering the reporter’s quip about communism being associated with communitarianism, Etzioni replies with: “Well, yes, when it first came up in the mid-19th century, it was associated with communism in East Asia.” If you’re talking East-Asia, shouldn’t that have been the mid-20th century? And even if it was a mistake and he meant to say mid-20th, it would still be incorrect. Communitarianism did not “first come up” in the mid-20th.
In fact, Etzioni is well aware of exactly from whence it came. In his The Essential Communitarian Reader, p. ix, we read:
…the term itself was coined only in 1841 by [John Goodwyn] Barmby, who founded the Universal Communitarian Association. In this and other nineteenth-century usage, communitarian means “a member of a community formed to put into practice communistic or socialists theories.” [my emphasis]
Basically, yes, that’s where the term originated; but Barmby’s “Universal Communitarian Association” was originally called the “Communist Propaganda Society“!
And talk about disingenuous. Etzioni would have us believe that a loose assemblage of naive sociologists and change agents, in the ’90s, stumbled upon a unique-sounding word; liked what they heard; investigated its origins and ideological legacy; found that it was synonymous and contemporary with Owenite socialism, Fourier’s Phalanxes, Barmby’s Christian Communism, Left and Right Hegelians, and the Utopian schemes of the Saint-Simonians; decided to adopt it anyway; and that it henceforth shall have a totally new meaning and purpose!
I would like to draw your attention to another story at Niki Raapana’s “Living Outside the Dialectic” (a clever and apt title if there ever was one). I wasn’t aware of this, but it turns out that Fareed Zakaria (Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission, CFR) is quite the Communitarian as well. Now I am immediately reminded of that photo taken of Obama’s choice of literature back in the summer of 2008.
Obama reading "The Post-American World" by communitarian Fareed Zakaria
Tags: Communitarianism, Etzioni, Terry Melanson
PERFECTIBILISTS: The 18th Century Bavarian Order of the Illuminati
The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship
Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism
Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith
America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones
February 6th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
In reading “Coomunitarianism is actually associaton with communism,” I would rather read it: Communitariam is actually associated with ‘ideals
of communism’ advocated in East Asia in 1930s.
February 6th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
The “ideals” of communism and communitarianism are the same. Etzioni is correct when he says that communitarians sought “to put into practice communistic or socialists theories.”
March 19th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Hello! I’m writing a new article and am citing this as the source for the Etzioni quote. I hadn’t seen it before you posted it here. It’s a very misleading statement, not only the whole East Asia bit, but the fact that he leaves us assuming it’s just a “neo” version of communism takes it right back into the dialectical divide. He’s feeding the right’s misunderstanding because he knows they sound like nuts to Obama’s supporters, who will in turn use it to keep the left v right fights going strong. “But nobody wants him to label it thus” is the most telling part, it means Obama’s people know it but don’t want us to know it… not yet…not until they’re ready to tell us. They want the whole system in place first.
By calling it communism, the left can laugh at the “stupid right” and the right assumes they already know everything they need to know about it, which means neither side will look at communitarian laws and programs that are rapidly changing our republic into a global communitarian regional government.
Etzioni knows how quietly effective it remains if people don’t know exactly what communitarianism is, and how powerless we are against it if we can’t see how it incorporates BOTH capitalism and communism. It is half communism and half capitalism, and sometimes more one than the other…very slippery theory. He also claims it protects individual rights because it only eliminates some of them.
I took the exit link to the Jerusalem Post, read the first couple lines and a warning popped up that the site was hacking into my pc. Did you have that problem while you were there?
Thanks for the respectful acknowledgement of my research too, I appreciate that a lot, it’s very rare.
“As revolutionary instruments (when nothing but revolution will cure the evils of the State) [secret societies] are necessary and indispensable, and the right to use them is inalienable by the people.” –Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1803. FE 8:256
March 19th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Thanks for the comment!
“a warning popped up that the site was hacking into my pc. Did you have that problem while you were there?”
No, it did not happen for me, nor has it ever before - anywhere. I do know, however, that it is a classic symptom of a virus or a trojan horse or spyware of some sort. From whence did this “warning” originate? Was it a simple Javascript popup (in its own window) that was initiated by the browser itself, or did it occur through the operating system? I seem to remember you writing before that you have javascript disabled; if that is the case, then it would be the latter: the “popup” was instantiated from within your operating system. This is indeed an infection of some kind, and if standard virus and spyware scans fail to find a problem - and the annoyance still occurs - then reformatting and re-installing may be the only solution.
Re: Jefferson:
Though he didn’t say “secret societies” specifically, he was talking about “bodies whose organization is unknown to the Constitution.” So, in a sense, he was alluding to “secret societies.” He did support Weishaupt’s efforts, for instance, and could see clearly why the Illuminati would have been necessary in a despotic, obscurantist environment that was Bavaria at the time. I agree with him on that: the Illuminati had no choice but to operate in the shadows. But he didn’t spend enough time analyzing the socialist anarcho-politico revolutionary doctrine of Weishaupt. If he did, he wouldn’t have been so eager to support such things as primitivist egalitarianism, and disdain for private property; he would have realized, also, that Weishaupt, especially, was a totalitarian and only used the concepts of virtue, equality and liberty as a ruse.
The last part of the sentence which quoted above, is also interesting.
August 23rd, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Lions, Tigers, and Bears Oh, My!
January 21st, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Oh boy.
I am just learning about communitarianism for a research project and have been purusing a number of sources and articles. I came across this one. I got as far as “Fareed Zakaria (Bildergerg, tri-lateral commission, CFR)” and had to stop. Then I looked at my address bar and saw… “conspiracyarchive.com”. Ooops! My mistake!
Coo coo, the lot of you!
January 21st, 2010 at 11:08 pm
You eat shit too before you smell it? That’s the last paragraph wise ass :K